Child Sexual Abuse and Number of Sexual Partners in Young Women: The Role of Abuse Severity, Coping Style, and Sexual Functioning.

Abstract

The authors proposed and tested a model describing distinct pathways through which childhood sexual abuse (CSA) may lead to relatively low or high numbers of sexual partners in adulthood. Path analyses were conducted on survey responses of young female U.S. Navy recruits who reported CSA (N ϭ 547). Use of avoidant strategies to cope with CSA was expected to produce higher levels of sexual problems and fewer heterosexual sex partners, whereas use of self-destructive coping strategies was expected to result in more dysfunctional sexual behavior and more heterosexual sex partners. As predicted, the effect of CSA on number of sex partners was largely mediated by coping strategies and dysfunctional sexual behavior.Child sexual abuse (CSA) has been associated with numerous negative outcomes, including anxiety, depression, suicide attempts, low self-esteem, substance abuse, and problems with trust and intimacy (for reviews, see Beitchman et al., 1992;Browne & Finkelhor, 1986;Green, 1993). One of the most frequently reported findings is that sexually abused women are at increased risk for sexual difficulties ranging from avoidance of sex to compulsive sexual behavior (Browne & Finkelhor, 1986;Green, 1993;Polsuny & Follette, 1995). Finkelhor and Browne (1985) proposed that CSA might produce seemingly opposing outcomes-"aversion to sex" versus "sexual promiscuity"-through the process of traumatic sexualization.Traumatic sexualization refers to the shaping of a child's sexuality in an interpersonally dysfunctional manner, leading to lasting inappropriate associations with sexual activity and arousal. Specifically, if a child experiences high levels of revulsion, fear, anger, or powerlessness during CSA, he or she may be conditioned to associate sex with negative emotions and memories. These negative emotional reactions may subsequently generalize to nonabusive sexual experiences in adulthood, leading to sexual dysfunction, including phobic reactions to sexual intimacy and avoid-ance of sex. In other cases, CSA experiences may teach the child to associate rewards, attention, and affection with engaging in sexual behavior. If this occurs, adults sexually abused as children may use sex to meet nonsexual needs (e.g., seeking love through sex, sexualizing nonsexual relationships, or using sex to manipulate others), and sexual promiscuity may result. Finkelhor and Browne's (1985) conceptualization of traumatic sexualization thus suggests that some adults sexually abused as children will engage in sexual activity with many partners, whereas others will engage in little sexual activity and have few partners.Research on sexual behavior in adults sexually abused as children has generally found that sexually abused respondents have more sex partners than nonabused respondents. This has been documented in clinical populations and populations at high risk of contracting HIV (

Childhood and adolescent sexual abuse and subsequent sexual risk behavior: Evidence from controlled studies, methodological critique, and suggestions for research

“…However, other age cut-offs have also been reported, including age 17 (e.g., Paul, Catania, Pollack, & Stall, 2001;Walser & Kern, 1996) age 16 (e.g., Bartoi & Kinder, 1998;Kalichman, Gore-Felton, Benotsch, Cage, & Rompa, 2004), age 15 (e.g., Jinich et al, 1998;Mayall & Gold, 1995), age 14 (e.g., Merrill, Guimond, Thomsen, & Milner, 2003), and age 13 (e.g., Carballo-Dieguez & Dolezal, 1995;DiIorio, Hartwell, & Hansen, 2002).…”

The Evaluation of Sexual Abuse in Children

“…Research has shown that there are 2 responses to sexual abuse: one that reflects inhibition and the other that reflects excitation, and it is in the latter group that more sexual behavior is observed. 13 …”

The Impact of Child Sexual Abuse

“…A positive answer to any of these nine screening questions was followed with questions asking more detailed information regarding the nature of the CSA incident that included: 1) type of physical contact, 2) age of the participant at the time of the abuse, 3) frequency of abuse, and 4) relationship of the perpetrator to the participant. A multidimensional index of CSA capturing the severity of the abuse experience was created using the additional information that have been demonstrated to individually predict a variety of severe outcomes (11,12).…”

“…Higher scores on any of the dimensions of the CSA experience reflect greater levels of CSA severity (12,13,14).…”